Do go see See the Sea

Do go See the Sea, a focused display at Brighton Museum which brings together more than three centuries of coastal art showing how the shoreline has been imagined since Brighton was a tiny 16th-century fishing village. The museum describes it as a family-friendly selection of dramatic seascapes and beachside scenes, inviting visitors to ‘sail through romantic seas and skies to views of today’s vibrant seafront.’ Within that sweep of changing light and tide, one image stands out for its sheer rarity: Adrian Hill’s rain-soaked view of the beach and front - Rain at Brighton (pictured).

Hill’s painting records a wet Brighton afternoon in tones almost never chosen by earlier artists. The roadway glistens like beaten metal, lampposts stretch doubled in puddles, and the pier seems suspended in a vapour of cloud and sea-mist. At a time when most painters presented Brighton as a place of perpetual sunshine, Hill shows the beach under the weather that so often shapes it, capturing how the whole seafront alters when rain flattens colour and rhythm.

The contrast with earlier panoramas in the gallery is marked. James Webb and George Earl’s Brighton from the West Pier presents a regatta day in crystalline light, the beach crowded and the new pier drawn with architectural pride. A related view from the pier-head shows the same coast alive with promenade fashion and small boats inching close to shore, mirroring the Victorian belief that the seaside was both spectacle and cure. The beach is tidy, public, and bright - a deliberate image of a rising resort.

Other works preserve the working coastline that preceded this leisure era. The early view - Kemp Town from the Sea by John Wilson Carmichael - shows a foreshore of fishing craft, winches and drying nets, with fresh-built terraces climbing behind the shingle. It records a landscape still half-rural, half-ambitious, caught just before Brighton’s speculative growth overwhelmed its maritime past. In stark opposition, Floating Breakwaters off Brighton (pictured) shows a rough Channel hammering the long timber groynes, the town barely visible through blown spray.